Look to Windward

~ Are you still on board? Do you still intend to carry out your mission?

~ I do.

~ Good fellow. Let me tell you; I admire you, Major Quilan. It’s been an honour and a pleasure to share your head. Just sorry it’s coming to an end so soon.

~ I haven’t carried it out yet. I haven’t made the Displace.

~ You’ll do it. They suspect nothing. The beast is taking you to its bosom, to the very centre of its lair. You’ll be fine.

~ I’ll be dead, Huyler. In oblivion. That’s all I care about.

~ I’m sorry, Quil. But what you’re doing… there’s no better way to go.

~ I wish I could believe that. But soon it won’t matter. Nothing will.

Tersono made a throat-clearing noise. “Yes, it is a remarkable sight, isn’t it, Ambassador? Quite stunning. Some people have been known to stand here or sit here and drink it in for hours. Kabe; you stood here for what seemed like half a day, didn’t you?”

“I’m sure I must have,” the Homomdan said. His deep voice echoed round the viewing gallery, producing echoes. “I do beg your pardon. How long half a day must seem for a machine that thinks at the pace you do, Tersono. Please forgive me.”

“Oh, there is nothing to forgive. We drones are perfectly used to being patient while human thoughts and meaningful actions take place. We possess an entire suite of procedures specifically evolved over the millennia to cope with such moments. We are actually considerably less boreable, if I may create a neologism, than the average human.”

“How comforting,” Kabe said. “And thank you. I always find such a level of detail rewarding.”

“You okay, Quilan?” the avatar said.

He turned to the silver-skinned creature. “I’m fine.” He gestured towards the sight of the Orbital surface sliding slowly past, gloriously bright, one and a half million kilometres away but apparently much closer. The view from the gallery was normally magnified, not shown as it would have been if there was nothing between viewer and view but glass. The effect was to bring the interior perimeter closer, so that one could see more detail.

The rate it was sliding past at also gave a false impression; the Hub’s viewing gallery section revolved very slowly in the opposite direction to the world’s surface, so that instead of the entire Orbital taking a day to pass in front of the viewer, the experience commonly occupied less than an hour.

~ Quilan.

~ Huyler.

~ Are you ready?

~ I know the real reason they put you aboard, Huyler.

~ Do you?

~ I believe I do.

~ And what would that be, Quil?

~ You’re not my back-up at all, are you? You’re theirs.

~ Theirs?

~ Of Visquile, our allies—whoever they are—and the military high-ups and politicians who sanctioned this.

~ You’ll have to explain, Major.

~ Is it supposed to be too devious for a bluff old soldier to have thought of?

~ What?

~ You’re not here to give me somebody to moan to, are you, Huyler? You’re not here to provide me with company, or to be some sort of expert on the Culture.

~ Have I been wrong about anything?

~ Oh, no. No, they must have loaded you with a complete Culture database. But it’s all stuff anybody could get from the standard public reservoirs. Your insights are all second-hand, Huyler; I’ve checked.

~ I’m shocked, Quilan. Do we think this counts as slander or libel?

~ You are my co-pilot though, aren’t you?”

~ That’s what you were told I was to be. That’s what I am.

~ In one of those old-fashioned, manual-only aeroplanes the co-pilot is there, at least partly, to take over from the pilot if he’s unable to perform his duties. Is that not true?

~ Perfectly.

~ So, if I changed my mind now, if I was determined not to make the Displacement, if I decided that I didn’t want to kill all these people… What? What would happen? Tell me. Please be honest. We owe each other honesty.

~ You’re sure you want to know?

~ Quite perfectly.

~ You’re right. If you won’t make the Displace, I make it for you. I know exactly the bits of your brain you used to make it happen, I know the precise procedures. Better than you, in a way.

~ So the Displace takes place regardless?

~ So the Displace takes place regardless.

~ And what happens to me?

~ That depends on what you try to do. If you try to warn them, you drop down dead, or become paralysed, or undergo a fit, or start babbling nonsense, or become catatonic. The choice is mine; whatever might arouse the least suspicion in the circumstances.

~ My. Can you do all that?

~ I’m afraid so, son. All just part of the instruction set. I know what you’re going to say before you say it, Quil. Literally. It’s only just before, but that’s enough; I think pretty quickly in here. But Quil, I wouldn’t take pleasure in doing any of that. And I don’t think I’m going to have to. You’re not telling me you just thought of all this?

~ No. No, I thought of it a long time ago. I just wanted to wait until now to ask you, in case it spoiled our close relationship, Huyler.

~ You are going to do it, aren’t you? I won’t have to take over, will I?

~ I haven’t really had those hours of grace at the beginning and end of each day at all, have I? You’ve been watching all the time to make sure I didn’t give any sign to them, just in case I had already changed my mind.

~ Would you believe me if I told you that you did have that time without me watching?

~ No.

~ Well, it doesn’t really matter anyway. But, as you might imagine, I will be listening in from now on, until the end. Quilan, again; you are going to do it, aren’t you? I won’t have to take over, will I?

~ Yes, I’m going to do it. No, you won’t have to take over.

~ Well done, son. It is truly hateful, but it does have to be done. And it will all be over soon, for both of us.

~ And many more besides. All right then. Here we go.

He had made six successful Displacements in a row within the mock-up of the Hub which had been constructed within the station orbiting the sun-moon of the airsphere. Six successes out of six attempts. He could do it. He would do it.

They stood within the mock-up of the observation gallery, faces lit by the image of an image. Visquile explained the thinking behind his mission.

“We understand that in a few months’ time the Hub Mind of Masaq’ Orbital will mark the passing of the light from the two exploding stars that gave the Twin Novae Battle of the Idiran War its name.”

Visquile stood very close to Quilan. The broad band of light—a simulation of the image that he would see